Go among trees and sit Mark 4: 30-32 November 15, 2015 Chad Martin [Jesus] also said, With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. I want to begin by telling you about one of the highlights of my sabbatical this fall. Four weeks ago today I was on a three-day hiking trip through the Laurel Highland Mountains of western Pennsylvania. When planning my sabbatical I had wanted some time for silent retreat and looked at a number of facilitated options. But as the three months unfolded, I realized what I really wanted was to be outside in solitude. So I set out for 19 miles and two nights that were a convergence of the best weekend of the year for witnessing the autumn leaves as well as the coldest night of the season to date! I m not sure what all I thought would happen to me on this trip. A friend on Facebook teased me comparing me to Cheryl Strayed, the protagonist of the movie Wild who hiked over a thousand miles in California trying to find herself after a recent divorce. I quipped that I was hoping to get the same amount of personal transformation packed into three days, while still emerging from the woods at the end of it looking as good as Reese Witherspoon did while playing Strayed in the movie. Well that didn t happen. There were no world-shifting epiphanies for me on the trail. But there was immeasurable beauty. I found a tranquility beyond expectation and too rich to recount with words. I saw almost no one for most of the three days. And being alone I had no one to impress with my hiking pace, and I quickly realized that the faster I got to my campsite each day the more time I would be pacing trying to stay warm in the evening. So I soon made a leisurely pace, perhaps you could say a meditative pace along the path. Going slow, I noticed that every step presented a shifting carpet of fallen leaves in every color auburn, red, green, purple, browning and infinite 1
patterns speckled, solid, torn, muted. Many steps of the way leaves crunching under my boots were the loudest sound I heard. So I stopped frequently to listen for what else moved through the woods: the breeze, song birds flitting overhead, passing helicopters, distant highway traffic at times, and yes, gently falling sleet one day. At that pace I looked with wonder over and over at the shifting landscape as I moved through the woods. The Laurel Highlights are not a place for grand vistas, so my attention often stayed on the foreground. I noticed the texture of bark on trees, the many sandstone boulders strewn about, subtle shifts in the terrain, even the interplay between the painted trail-markers sprayed on nearby trees and rocks. One day I stopped at a huge rock outcropping a hundred yards or so off the main trail. It was easy to see through the bare trees if you knew to look for it. The underside of the outcropping made for sort of an open cave area overlooking the shallow valley below. That day there was light snow falling as I hiked. This big rock formation offered a dry spot to sit for an hour or more eating snacks, listening, journaling As I sat there, three hikers hurried past on the trail below never thinking to look up to take notice of me ore the rocks. There I sat in totally new surroundings, but feeling totally at home. But that s my story. Take a moment to recall a time when the outdoors offered you perfect peace. You can close your eyes for a moment if you feel comfortable. Recall a time in a favorite park or your garden or on some wilderness adventure of your own. Can you bring back the smells? The sounds? The colors? How did you feel? Sit in that memory for a minute Cheyenne Peace Chief and Mennonite pastor, Lawrence Hart says, Today, we need creative poets, composers, liturgists, and others to explore how to root our worship in the land. We need to sing the land, to experience it, to be transformed by its power, and so glorify God. [1] The guidebook I carried with me about the Laurel Highlands pointed out that in many forests of Pennsylvania you often see the remains of American chestnut trees. The blight that ravaged the species decades ago left tall sturdy trunks still standing with roots in the ground. Many still stand with branches long gone, what remains slowly rotting. But they remain, like ghosts of devastations past reflecting back to us the heavy-handed ways humanity 2
tromps across the planet. Reading about chestnut trees I remembered a conversation with the shuttle driver who took me from my car to the beginning of my hike. He was an old hippie who had lived in the area for 30-40 years. He said something like, You know these mountains have been ravaged over and over by extraction industries. Timber and then coal, and then timber and coal again. Now fracking. I m glad he set me off with that in mind. As I walked through the quiet beauty of those old mountains, I kept my eyes and heart open to the reality that there are no untouched places. We cannot fool ourselves into thinking there is such a thing as nature that exists outside of a harsh and exploitative relationship with human beings. Indeed, across 19 miles on some of the oldest mountains in North America, I saw few trees that looked more than 50-75 years old. During my sabbatical I carried in my heart this quote from Chief Lawrence Hart. These words are becoming a guide for how I think about prayer and worship. We need to sing the land, to experience it, to be transformed by its power, and so glorify God. With images of the land and forest and the outdoors in mind, hear the words of Jesus afresh. This parable about seeds and bushes and birds was not written inside the temple or sitting at a desk. This parable was spoken by one who walked through the hills of Galilee, who prayed in the wilderness, who had no bed of his own. We should read this parable while we are being transformed by the land, while we are rooted in the earth. Listen and take in the silence again: With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. When I landed on this parable for this Sunday, my thoughts went straight to some quotes about it from biblical scholars that have helped me reframe what Jesus may have been talking about. They include a quote from John Dominic Crossan about the Kingdom of God being like a noxious weed that 3
you can t control and would only want in small doses. And this from another scholar: The dominion that Jesus was proclaiming, which called home various unwanted birds to live (the sinners and tax collectors? the Gentiles?), was a threat to the existing garden or field [2] Well it turns out I liked these quotes so much that I used the exact same batch the only other times I have preached on this parable at CMCL. Here s what I said three years ago: This, Jesus says, is what the kingdom of God is like. There is room for all sorts of characters to roost. In fact it will be a place of refuge for all kinds of strange birds. There is room in the kingdom for homeless and beggars, addicts and criminals. There is room for gay people and transgendered people for the gambit of sexual orientations. There is room for Muslims and Jews and atheists. There is room for refugees, undocumented workers and returning citizens. I love that take on the parable. Even mustard seeds can be subversive and political and prophetic. But can you really just trot out the same quotes from bible scholars time after time? You may start to think I m taking this sabbatical thing a little too far. As Rod used to quip, it would be a lot cheaper to buy the content from sermons.com and have someone read it. Cheaper yet to have him raid my sermon files and dust off the old ones you ve all forgotten by now. But more importantly, I have been reading Cynthia Bourgeault s book The Wisdom of Jesus. Some of you will remember working with the audio version of her lessons on the same topic almost ten years ago in an Adult Christian Ed series here. This is my first time through the book, and though it s not completely new concepts for me she makes a strong case for interpreting Jesus first and foremost as a wisdom teacher akin to gurus in many religious traditions. Here s what she has to say about the Kingdom of God: [One] approach people have consistently tried is to equate the Kingdom of Heaven with an earthly utopia. The Kingdom of Heaven would be a realm of 4
peace and justice, where human beings lived together in harmony and fair distribution of economic assets. For thousands of years prophets and visionaries have labored to bring into being their respective versions of this [kind] of Kingdom of Heaven, but somehow these earthly utopias never seem to stay put for very long. And here again, Jesus specifically rejected this meaning.[3] She names exactly what I have most often believed about the Kingdom of God. But she s not convinced. Instead, Bourgeault pictures it akin to the teachings of the great Eastern traditions. She says, "The Kingdom of Heaven is really a metaphor for a state of consciousness; it is not a place you go to, but a place you come from. It is a whole new way of looking at the world, a transformed awareness that literally turns this world into a different place [It sees] No separation between God and humans What [Jesus] has in mind is a complete, mutual indwelling: I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other."[4] Transformation begins with us. Within. For those of us steeped in Mennonite teaching about service, justice and hard work that is, for me it s hard to believe this is enough. What about transforming the world toward the common good? The wisdom of Jesus, the wisdom of the parable, teaches that even planting this very, very small seed of transformation within one s self is enough. It will be enough. It will grow and grow to something substantial. What begins as compassion for your self will grow into so vast a compassion that all creation can take refuge within it. I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. This has been another grim week in international news. The images and stories coming from Paris this week cast a long shadow over all of this. And we have been heartbroken all over again. As we have so many times when the world s brokenness is laid bare in front of us. In face of yet another week characterized by lethal violence and hatred is it really enough for us to sit here and talk about personal transformation inspired by trees and birds and contemplation? 5
Frankly, I don t know. But I know that all we can really change is ourselves. And the wisdom of Jesus says it will be enough. Planting the small seed of inner transformation will be enough. Plus, maybe this is the hardest thing to do, to change one s self. As Bourgeault says, [It s] very, very simple. It only costs everything. [5] What begins as compassion for your self will grow into so vast a compassion that all creation can take refuge within it. I am in God, God is in you, you are in God, we are in each other. And it will grow in wild, feral ways that you cannot contain or predict. It will keep popping up all over the place. Maybe, just maybe maybe with the help of a miracle the compassionate arms will reach far enough to be felt in places like Paris. And Syria. And the West Bank. Not to mention our back yards. In our neighborhoods. Maybe, just maybe. Divine wisdom says it begins with a tiny seed. We cannot know what will become of our own transformation, but we are assured it will grow into something that flourishes over and over. It will grow with a kind of wily abundance that cannot be contained or predicted or controlled. But you do not need to worry or labor over what it is becoming. It is enough to plant the seed within you. It s very, very simple. It only costs everything. [1] Chief Lawrence Hart, The Earth is a Song Made Visible: A Cheyenne Christian Perspective, in Buffalo Shout, Salmon Cry: Conversations on Creation, Land Justice, and Life Together, ed. Steve Heinrichs (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2013), 161. [2] Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 172. [3] Cynthia Bourgeault, The Wisdom of Jesus: Transforming Heart and Mind a New Perspective on Christ and His Message (Boston: Shambhala, 2008), 30. [4] Bourgeault, 30-31 (original emphasis). [5] Bourgeault, 70. 6